Mravcík V, Nechanská B, St'astná L
Národní monitorovací stredisko pro drogy a drogové závislosti, Praha.
Epidemiol Mikrobiol Imunol. 2011 Feb;60(1):21-31.
Similarly to the prevalence of disorders related to the use of addictive substance, the system of medical care for patients with addictive disorders, including the residential treatment, has changed dramatically in the Czech Republic in the last 50 years.
To perform descriptive analysis of historical data gathered, analysed and published by the Institute for Health Information and Statistics since 1959 on the inpatient psychiatric facilities, and numbers and characteristics of patients hospitalised due to addictive disorders in 1959-2008.
The number of episodes of hospitalisation due to alcohol-related conditions was increasing throughout the whole monitored period since the end of the 1950s. After a short decrease at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s, the alcohol-related hospitalisations increased again to the historical peak of 11,691 episodes in 2005. As compared to alcohol-related admissions, the number of hospitalisations due to other (non-alcoholic) addictive disorders was 5-10 times lower until 1993 (60-1,000 episodes annually); however, a sharp increase was observed since 1994, to 5,264 episodes in 2008. The proportion of males among hospitalised alcohol users is currently about 70% in comparison with approximately 95 % at the very beginning of the study period, with most hospitalised persons being aged 40-49 years. Users of sedatives and hypnotics are more often females (approximately 65%), with the highest proportion of them being also aged 40-49 years. From 70 to 90% of hospitalised users of other addictive substances, i. e. illicit drugs and volatile substances, the percentage varying with the substance, are males and the highest proportion of cases is reported in the age group 20-29 years. In the last 15 years, the highest relative rates of hospitalisations for alcohol-related conditions were recorded in the Zlin, Olomouc and Moravian-Silesian Regions and for non-alcohol substance abuse in Prague and the Ustí Region. The inpatient psychiatric bed capacity considerably decreased after 1989, which contrasts with the increasing number of alcohol-related and particularly non-alcohol substance-related hospitalisations since the 1990s.
The data on hospitalised users of addictive substances are a valuable contribution to the body of information about drug use and its consequences in the Czech Republic and are complementary to the description of the epidemiological situation and trends seen in other data sources. They are of crucial relevance to the study of alcohol abuse due to the scarcity of other data sources in the Czech Republic.
